All who know me, and any who read me even occasionally, can't help but be aware of how big a fan I am of adoption that ignores arbitrary dividers like borders, boundaries and nationalities. Not only do I have two kids who started off in a country I'd never set foot in before concluding the journey of our first adoption, I am passionate about the benefits … to children first, and parents later, but importantly, as well … of adopting internationally, and I do whatever I can do to keep the option open for the world's children.

I see no reason a circumstantial set of events that determine the place of a person's birth should dictate where a life must be lived. Nationality and ethnicity are insignificant variations in humans, and as far as I'm concerned, the more the mix the merrier.

Oh so very comfortable with my POV, engraved in stone as it is in this rock-hard head of mind, something in this morning's news presented me with quite the challenge.

With a new and possibly habitable planet discovered, do I need to expand the territory I've been considering of consequence and start thinking in terms of intergalactic adoption? Should I begin to formulate opinions on this before the anti-adoption brigade leaps to the fore and manages to put the kibosh on the possibility of orphan children from Planet 581c finding a home with parents on Earth ... or vice versa?

(Strictly speaking, contact with 581c, being in the Milky Way with us as it is, is not intergalactic, but inter-solar system. That's not nearly as much fun to say, though.)

My whole concept of 'global family' needs a rethink, as does the idea that, "we're all human, so does it really matter if parents and kids don't look alike?"

I mean ... what if we're not, and what if it does?

For a peek at what an alien adoption might entail, see the next post.